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I UNITED STATES OF AMElflCA f 



VIEWS 



WHITE MOUNTAINS 



WITH DESCRIPTIONS 



BY 



M. F. SWEETSER. 

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K J^o ILUJU 



PORTLAND : 
CHISHOLM BROTHERS. 

1879. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S79, 

By HUGH J. CHISHOLM, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



Franklin Press: 

Electrotyped and Printed ly 

Rand, ATcry, &" CV., 

Boiton. 



PREFACE. 




fHE object of this volume is to afford to visitors among the 
White Mountains a souvenir of their grand scenery, as well as 
to enable those who have not yet seen them to obtain an idea of 
their exceeding majesty and beauty. In the snug houses on the 
slopes of Beacon Hill and Murray Hill, when the blasts of win- 
ter are sweeping the darkened streets, and the family gathers 'around the 
evening fireside, these views may serve to bring back the memories of past 
days of summer gladness, and renew a thousand fading impressions of beauty 
and delight. 

In one respect at least, and that an important one, the pictures herein 
contained are superior to any other collection of illustrations of the White 
Mountains. They are in no way idealized or exaggerated, as is customary in 
such works, but present faithful transcripts of the actual scenes as painted by 
the sun. They were printed by the heliotype process from photographs taken 
from the objects themselves, and hence are as nearly accurate as it is possible 
to have them. The impressions were made with printers' ink, and are as per- 
manent as the letter-press ; so that the fidelity of a photograph is secured, with- 
out its perishability. 

It is also hoped that the descriptions appended to the pictures may be of 
some value, as showing the localities of the various scenes, and their relations 
to other points among the highlands. If ability and enthusiasm always went 
together with equal step and parallel course (which they do not), these notes 
would be not altogether unworthy of the objects that they commemorate, since 
the writer has been for years an ardent lover of the mountains, and has explored 
their highest and remotest peaks, and their deepest and most terrible ravines. 




CONTENTS. 

■^ The White Mountains, — an Introductory Sketch. 

The Franconia Notch, Echo Lake, and the Profile House, "^ 

The Profile, or Old Man of the Mountain. 
^ The Profile House. 

Echo Lake, Franconia Notch. 

The Flume. 

View in Bethlehem. 

The Maplewood Hotel, y 

The Fabyan House. 

The Old Willey House. . 

Jacob's Ladder, Mount-Washington Railway. 

Lizzie Bourne's Monument. • 

The Frankenstein Trestle. 




THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 




^NTHONY TROLLOPE, the charming English novelist and 
delineator of life in the old cathedral-towns, once frankly con- 
fessed that he had a vague idea that the White Mountains were 
a sort of link between the Rocky Mountains and the Allegha- 
nies, inhabited by Mormons, Indians, or black bears ; and then 
goes on to say, "That there was a district in New England 
containing mountain-scenery superior to much that is yearly crowded by tour- 
ists in Europe, that this is to be reached with ease by railways and stage- 
coaches, and that it is dotted with huge hotels almost as thickly as they lie 
in Switzerland, I had no idea." 

This region, which already enjoys a transatlantic fame, covers an area of 
over twelve hundred square miles, bounded in a large way by the lake-country 
of New Hampshire on the south, and the Connecticut Valley on the west and 
north. The eastern limits are less easily determined, since the mountain sys- 
tem of Maine is interlocked with the northern White Mountains, and stretches 
away to the north-east for over a hundred miles. The Edinburgh encyclo- 
pedist, indeed, calls Mount Katahdin the eastern outpost of the range ; but the 
peaks in Maine are in semi-detached groups, separated by wide valleys, and so 
remote in the wilderness that they are seldom visited by tourists. The White 
Mountains, as regarded by unscientific persons (and map-makers as well), stop 
at the border of Maine. 

Although actually nearer the equator than Mont Blanc is, and on the 
same parallel as Bordeaux, Bologna, Genoa, and Belgrade, the climate of this 
region is much more severe than that of Switzerland at the same altitudes, 
and the alpine region is encountered at lower levels. If the summit of Mount 
Washington were two thousand feet higher, it would be covered with perpetual 
snow, even in the face of the summer sun of America. As it is, the snow- 
banks remain about the head of Tuckerman's Ravine throughout June and 



The White Mountains. 

July, hundreds of feet long;, and in their lower parts hardened into glacial ice. 
The sudden changes of temperature thus induced between points but a few 
miles apart give rise to astonishing varieties in the fauna and flora of the 
region, which have deeply interested the botanists and entomologists of adja- 
cent States, and called forth their careful study. The sumptuous volumes 
recently published by the State of New Hampshire, under the direction of Pro- 
fessor Hitchcock, contain minute descriptions of the plants and insects found 
upon the highlands, with the fullest details of the geology and climatology 
thereof. The flora is that of the Canadian division, as distinguished from the 
Alleghanian division, which stops at Lake Winnepesaukee and North Conway ; 
and its chief members are the pines and cedars, darkening the mountain- 
slopes ; the maples, birches, and oaks, enriching the autumnal landscape with 
most glorious color; and the elms, which so adorn the meadows of Conway 
and Lancaster. Ferns and flowers of great variety ornament the glens, and 
infinite quantities of delicious berries are found on the ridges. There are fifty 
species of alpine plants, which are found nowhere in New England save on 
these highlands: and a careful writer on the subject has said, "The wind- 
swept summits of our White Mountains are to the botanist the most interesting 
locality east of the Mississippi ; for there are found the lingering remnants of 
a flora once common, probably, to all New England, but which, since the close 
of the glacial epoch, has, with few exceptions, retreated to Arctic America." 

The geological history of the district is very interesting, and has been 
recorded by some of the foremost scientific men in America and England. 
Floods of molten rock have poured over the country, level as a lake, hotter 
than Phlegethon, and hardening into vast areas of granite. Centuries, or it 
may have been hundreds of centuries, later, the ocean swept its blue tides 
around the bases and far up into the passes of the mountains, leaving there its 
sedimentary rocks and marine fossils to bear testimony to the great invasion. 
The White Mountains were a group of islands, on whose rocky shores the 
ancient sea broke, carving the record of its victory as legibly as Trajan in- 
scribed his triumphs on the Iron Gates of the Danube. Next came the glacial 
age, when New Hampshire suffered the climate and possessed the appearance 
of Greenland, buried under thousands of feet of ice, a huge pall of death, 
enduring for centuries, and slowly moving toward the south with irresistible 
force. 

Out of all these convulsions Nature at last wrought her perfect work, and 
prepared the land for the dwelling of man. He, in turn, began a career of 
improving and changing the face of the hills, and governing their life. The 



The White Moiuitains. 

wolf and the mountain-lynx, once so common here, are now as extinct as the 
dodo, or as the luckless Indians whose wigwams arose by the corn-fields on 
the intervales. The echoes of the rangers' rifles have been taken up by the 
roar of blasting-powder, opening pathways for commerce and travel through 
the dark defiles ; and this, in turn, is replaced by the long screech of locomo- 
tives storming up the slopes. 

Every surveying-party which returns to Washington from the Far West 
brings tidings of some new region of natural wonders, stupendous mountains, 
dizzy gorges, thunderous waterfalls, until at last we have surpassed the Alps, 
and emulate the Caucasus. Some one once called the White Mountains 
" the Switzerland of America," and the foolish phrase has since been on 
every lip. It is not quite clear why we should have a "Switzerland of 
America" (at least until the Revue des Deux Mondes finds a "Yo-Semite 
of Europe ") ; but, if the phrase must be used, it belongs to the Sierra Nevada, 
or the Snowy Range of Colorado. 

The chief mountain-resort of America, however, will remain in New 
Hampshire for many decades, whatever superior attractions the Western 
lands may develop, because the largest cities of the continent are within a 
day's ride, and hundreds of populous towns are almost within sight. Several 
first-class railroads reach the edge of the district, and one of them penetrates 
it from side to side, affording the best opportunities for reaching the sweet 
pastoral villages of the plains or the dark glens beyond. From these grand 
routes stage-roads and turnpikes stretch away in other directions, and logging- 
roads enter the deep woods. These, in turn, interlace with scores of paths cut 
through the forests and upon the mountains by the hotel-keepers and villagers, 
for the sole object of making easy the ways to scenes of grandeur and beauty. 
The A.ppalachian Mountain Club has had several important paths constructed 
of late years, devising their routes with great skill, and directing them upon 
noble view-points. Within the region thus developed there are nine hotels 
of the first class, accommodating from three hundred to five hundred guests 
each ; a score or more of second-class houses ; and hundreds of boarding- 
houses, varying in pretensions, from the well-supplied pensions of North Con- 
way and Bethlehem to the old-fashioned farm-houses of the hill-people. The 
villages just mentioned can accommodate more than twelve hundred guests 
each at one time ; and the hamlets of Gorham, Campton, Lancaster, Fran- 
conia, Conway, Jefferson Hill, and Jackson, have quarters for many hundreds 
more. All tastes and purses may now be suited in the wide variety which 
ranges from the palatial luxuries of the great hotels at five dollars a day 



The White Mountains. 

to the antique simplicity of the sequestered farm-houses at five dollars a week. 
There is also every variety of scenery here, amid which the summer loiterer 
may find the charms most congenial to his spirit, or combine their varying 
beauties in a rich contrast of effects. Does he seek the sweet and reposeful 
contiguity of emerald meadows, dotted with most exquisitely shaped trees, 
and overlooked by distant blue peaks.? — then let him find out Fryeburg on 
the east, nestling by the fair and fruitful intervales of the Saco ; or Lancaster 
on the west, the queen of the upper Connecticut Valley. Must he have blue 
waters of highland lakes to mirror the mountain-forms while he floats over 
the liquid crystal in some dainty little boat, deriding Fahrenheit.? — let him 
seek Centre Harbor, on many-islanded Winnepesaukee ; or the lonely inn 
which looks down upon the reflection of the proud purple peak of Chocorua, 
in the lake below ; or the beautiful tarns higher up in the hill-country, at 
the bases of the main ranges. Does he crave the most poetic and fasci- 
nating view of the great group of peaks, seen en faini/lc, and at such a dis- 
tance, that all their ruggedness and savagery are replaced by soft veiling tints 
and rare atmospheric effects.? — such grace he shall find at North Conway 
and Bethlehem, Shelburne and Jefferson Hill, and, better than all others, at 
Sugar Hill. Nor should he forget Bethel, the ancient hamlet by the Andros- 
coggin ; and Campton, viewing the grand Sandwich peaks up the Mad-River 
Valley, and Littleton, commanding such glorious vistas from her inwalling 
hills. But the majority of travellers prefer to come into the immediate pres- 
ence of tlie highest mountains, to face their frowning cliffs, be overshadowed 
by their immense ridges, and hear the music of their white cascades. For 
these there is Jackson, lifting its little church-spire in a wild and solitary 
glen ; Waterville, hemmed in by lofty and noble peaks and solemn ridges ; 
the Glen House, in face of the Presidential Range ; the Profile House, 
surrounded by the rarest curiosities of nature ; and the Crawford and Fabyan 
Houses, overlooked by the supreme summits of the highlands. In such a 
delightful region, who can go amiss .? 




FRANCONIA NOTCH, ECHO LAKE, AND PROFILE HOUSE. 




THE FRANCONIA NOTCH, ECHO LAKE, AND 
THE PROFILE HOUSE. 

HEN Freclrika Bremer contrasted the Franconia region with 
the Swedish districts of Dalecarlia and Norsland, she gave 
great praise to these latter by the simple fact of the comparison. 
The ruling charms of this delightful wilderness, according to 
the gifted Scandinavian traveller, are not its rocks and moun- 
tains, its chasms and ravines, but the affluence of foliage, and 
the brightness of the mountain-waters. And from our artist's standpoint, on 
the top of Bald Mountain, less than two miles distant from the Profile House, 
these two excellent traits of the Franconia region arc visible as from no other 
place. In comparison with the stupendous mass of Mount Lafayette, rising 
far into the heavens, close at hand, the craggy knoll of Bald Mountain appears 
almost insignificant ; and yet it rises very picturesquely above the blue lake 
below, and looks far out over the Green Mountains of Vermont and the deli- 
cious valleys which extend towards Lancaster. On the south is the fair bosom 
of Echo Lake, that brightest gem of the mountains, whose waters are of the 
most exquisite purity and clearness, and are furrowed throughout the summer 
by a flotilla of pretty pleasure-boats. Although Starr King ranked this moun- 
tain-tarn above even the Profile itself, as the chief attraction of Franconia, it is 
evident that he could not have rowed out upon its waters, since he describes it 
with much detail as emptying into the Pemigewasset ; thence to pass into the 
Mcrrimac, and move the wheels of Nashua and Lowell. In point of fact, the 
stream seeks the beach-levels through the Ammonoosuc and Connecticut Rivers. 
Beyond the lake is an expanse of dense green forest, amid which the high 
white sides of the Profile House rise like a palace of Aladdin, and, to the minds 
of the initiated, radiating a certain warmth of human life and luxury throughout 
the cold and silent wilderness. Beyond is the Franconia Notch, stretching 
away under line after line of gray-topped ridges, and glorified at evening by the 
level rays of the setting sun, which surge magnificently up the defile, while 
the shadows of the western peaks rise higher and higher on the opposite walls. 

More than any other pass in the White Mountains this has called forth 
the loving praises of our authors, and the brilliant chapters of Mr. Prime still 
form its best description. Even Harriet Martincau, who was so chary of 
eulogy for all things, natural, human, or superhuman, found the word "noble" 
the only one to apply here, and uttered it with a right good heart. Looking 
over the bright expanse of Echo Lake, the pictured cliffs, the rich-hued forests, 
we find a more appropriate adjective, and call the scene, in all its aspects and 
suggestions, simply beautiful. 




THE PROFILE. 




THE PROFILE, FRANCONIA NOTCH. 

HERE the road passes Profile Lake, near the Profile House, a 
guide-board directs the attention upward, and one of the most 
impressive sights of all this region of wonders bursts upon the 
vision. There, on the side of the opposing mountain, more than 
a thousand feet above the road, and vividly outlined against the 
sky, is the semblance of a colossal human profile, with an 
expression of intense weariness and melancholy, as if some heaven-defying 
Prometheus of the West had been chained to the red rocks of Mount Cannon 
until the hardness of his heart was reflected by the petrifaction of his head. 
This is the great Profile, which for over seventy years has been gazed upon, 
with varying emotions, by many myriads of travellers. For the slaves of the 
guide-book, who feel it their solemn duty to "do" every thing therein spoken 
of, any hour will suffice ; but the reverent pilgrim of Nature approaches this 
point of view only at late afternoon, when the great face is vividly outlined 
against the crimson glories of the western sky, and its pathetic and expectant 
expression aptly combines with the sadness of declining day. For thousands 
of years that grim simulacrum has faced the driving sleet of winter and the 
quivering lightnings of summer wdth silent patience and monumental faith; 
and has looked down upon the red Indians, countless as the leaves of the for- 
est, as they poured down from the remote West upon the rolling plains of the 
New-England wilderness before the dawn of American history. There are, 
indeed, traditions that the aborigines used to offer a rude form of worship here 
as to a symbol of Manitou himself, kindling their sacrificial fires on the shores 
of the crystalline lake below. But these Druid rites could not avail to save 
the doomed race; for during Queen Anne's W'ar the pale rangers of Massachu- 
setts destroyed their last hamlet of wigwams on the banks of the Pemige- 
wasset, and the crash of the Puritan volleys re-echoed from the rocky brow of 
the mountain-visage. Then came the measured and resistless advance of the 
Anglo-American race, following the same order of battle which has conquered 
Caffraria, New Zealand, and America, — first the hunters and trappers, then 
the pioneers and farmers, then the tourists, and at last the railway-builders. 
Shattering the primeval silence of the Gale-River Valley, and filling the ravines 
of Mount Lafayette with smoke and roaring, the iron steeds now pause within 
a mile of the Great Stone Face, and ere long will descend the Pemigewasset 
Valley on their levelled bands of steel. 




THE PROFILE HOUSE. 



THE PROFILE HOUSE. 




HE Franconia Mountains, though less lofty and majestic than 
their neighbors on the east, are in many respects more beauti- 
ful and rich in restful and tranquillizing influences. The woods 
have not suffered from fire to the extent that the White-Moun- 
tain forests have ; and now stand in all their primeval strength 
and richness, sweeping down from the crests of the ridges, 
and overarching the narrow road below with their abundant frondage. The 
sweet and tranquil lakelets nestling under the rugged cliffs, the wonderful and 
unique natural phenomena of the rocks, and the positive affluence of the sylvan 
scenery, give a peculiar charm to the whole Franconian region. Though the 
heights press upon the glen more closely than do the walls of the White- 
Mountain Notch, there is less of oppression and constraint in their effects, so 
fresh and attractive are the adornments which Nature has placed upon them. 
There are no memories of tragedy here, no sombre mementoes of disaster, no 
prolonged slopes of sand and rock, but bright color and wavy grace, mirror- 
like blue waters, gayly-tinted ledges, and unnumbered legions of hardy trees, 
scaling the steep inclines, and fearlessly facing the batteries of the elements. 
Among these verdant glens rises the Pemigewasset River, which ripples away 
down the Notch, and along that fair valley below, until, joining its crystal flood 
with the outflow of Lake Winnepesaukee, it forms the Merrimac, and hurries 
by many a busy city to meet the sea at gray old Newburyport. 

The human centre of all this family of woody peaks and sunlit tarns is the 
Profile House, with its group of villas and out-buildings, occupying the highest 
place in the Franconia Notch, 1,974 feet above the sea, and lifting a mass of 
white light against the dark verdure which rises on every hand. On one side 
towers the long and elephantine ridge of Cannon Mountain, crested with a 
siege-gun of stone ; and on the other are the foot-hills of the lofty and crag- 
crowned Mount Lafayette, from whose summit one can look into Mame, Ver- 
mont, and Canada. None of the pleasure-resorts of Northern New England 
have such charms for New-Yorkers and Philadelphians as this secluded glen 
enjoys ; and here scores of those graceful beauties of the Empire City, who are 
at once the prides of America and the idols of young Europe, fill the August 
days with more than vernal joys. 



ECHO LAKE, FRANCONIA NOTCH. 



ECHO LAKE, FRAN'CONIA NOTCH. 




iMID the noble brotherhood of green peaks called the Fran- 
conia Mountains, the spirit of awful myster}^ is petrified in the 
Profile, grandeur is exemplified in the vast masses of Mount 
Lafayette and Cannon Mountain, and weirdness, singularity, 
the grotesque phases of Nature's pla}-ful moods, are manifested 
in the Flume and the Pool. But the culmination of pure and 
simple beauty, the crown of grace, and the mirror of brightness, appears in 
Echo Lake, the limpid tarn which lies in the northern end of the Notch, high 
above the Franconian plains. The highway from the Profile House to Littleton 
skirts one side of it, and the ambitious little railway from Bethlehem station is 
on the opposite shore ; but both are hidden by the luxuriant forests which 
sweep down on all sides, save where the boat-houses rise to shelter Franconia's 
mimic navy. On the east are bold and picturesque cliffs, rising from the 
shores, and bracing the lower terraces of Mount Lafayette with stupendous 
buttresses of rugged rock, draped with climbing green vines, and hanging out 
the banners of the hardy trees, whose roots are fixed in the clefts of the preci- 
pice. Glorious tints of sunset fall upon these high walls and mounting pillars 
when the lake below has been shrouded in twilight, and the night is approach- 
ing from the eastern sea. At that hour the environs of Echo Lake are endowed 
with a profound fascination, and fairly glow with poetic splendor, while scores 
of glad-hearted visitors float upon the glassy waters in the pretty little boats of 
the Profile-House squadron. Then, too, the deep-toned shouts and the silver}- 
laughter of the evening voyagers are thrown back by the cliffs as if in badinage ; 
and the cannon on the western shore is fired from time to time to arouse sterner 
reverberations, rattling back from Artist's Bluff and Bald Mountain, and swell- 
ing away through the distant ravines in a sinking surge of sound. You may 
close your eyes, and let this ominous echo bring to mind the iron hail of Peters- 
burg or Plevna ; but to the quick vision the scene suggests some sweet and 
sylvan lakelet in an Arcadia of the Knickerbockers. 




THE FLUME. 



THE FLUME. 




"HE Flume House occupies a very beautiful situation on a 
terrace at the southern end of the Franconia Notch, and over- 
looks the extensive vistas of the Pemigewasset Valley, whose 
scenery is so widely famous for its pastoral beauty and idyllic 
grace. During the long, bright days of summer, the Campton 
lowlands are drenched with sunshine, and glorious in color; and 
the bright stream liows downward thereby, offering its crystal refreshment to 
the dreamy-eyed cattle, as it had given it to the mountain-bears above. 

It is less than a mile from the hotel to the great natural curiosity from 
which it derives its name, and the road stops at the long ledges which rise like 
a glacis to the castle-gate above. There the wonderful chasm begins, and 
extends along the flank of the mountain for seven hundred feet, with a width 
of from ten to twenty feet, and a depth of nearly sixty feet. On either side 
are perpendicular walls of granite, prolonged by the tall shafts of the forest- 
trees above, and overarched by a green canopy of foliage ; while the floor of 
the gorge is littered by fragments of rock, amongst which purls and babbles 
the rill from the icy reservoirs above. Rich mosses, freshened by the exhala- 
tions from below, form a graceful cornice to the walls, and adorn their sides 
with bits of vivid tapestry ; and summer-day visitors, sauntering along the 
plank-walk which lies by the brookside, enjoy the comforting dampness and 
coolness of the sunless depths, no matter what the heat in the valley outside. 

Here I have met Emerson, the sphynx of Concord, rambling solitary 
among the trees, and doubtless spiritually attended by a kindred group of 
ancient sages, as old as Hesiod, or at least as Plato, while he mused upon what 
he has so mystically called "the good rocks, those patient waiters." Starr 
King, one of the most enthusiastic of the earlier visitors to the Flume, insisted 
that every one who wished to see it properly should go alone, " quietly, and 
with reverence for the Spirit out of whose perennial bounty all beauty pours." 

If this brook-worn gorge thus suffices to amaze and attract us, what should 
we say of that vast and terrible Stygian river on the other side of our conti- 
nent, where for hundreds of miles the Colorado rolls its black waters along the 
bottom of a cleft in the rocky vestment of the earth, between perpendicular 
banks a mile high, silent, lifeless, sepulchral, and traversing the lands of an 
extinct nation t But immensity does not secure a proportionate notice among 
men, else the Yukon, rolling its huge floods through the Alaska lowlands, 
should be famous, and the tiny Ilissus, flowing hard by the Athenian Acropolis, 
should be unknown : wherefore w^e may prize this little rocky corridor of New 
England above the empire-dividing chasm of New Spain. 




VIEW IN BETHLEHEM. 




BETHLEHEM. 

OR many years North Conway enjoyed an easy supremacy 
among the resorts about the White Mountains ; but within the 
last decade she has been well-nigh dethroned by her rival be- 
yond the mountains, — Bethlehem. The richest colors of our 
famous artists, — Inness, Kensett, Champney, and scores of 
others; the most fervent rhapsodies of our great writers, — 
Starr King, Whittier, and many another ; and the marvellous legends of the 
adjacent country, — gave lavish tribute to the village by the Saco, while that 
by the Ammonoosuc remained silent and unknown. But now all that is 
changed, and the quondam darling of poet and artist may well be satisfied if 
she can partake in a joint sovereignty, — she queen in the East, and Bethle- 
hem queen in the West. When the railroad-builders, those Goths and 
Vandals of our age, reached North Conway, and stretched their rigid trestles 
and gravel-banks across her exquisite meadows, the charm was broken 
forever. The dweller at Bethlehem may often sigh for the Cathedral Woods 
of Conway, the great elms, idyllic poems of grace, and the lovely intervales 
which sweep out to the foot of Moat Mountain ; but he who passes the 
summer at North Conway will yearn for the cool northern breezes which daily 
visit the rival hamlet almost a thousand feet higher in the air, and will crave 
that magnificent prospect over many a glen and ridge which reaches half way 
to Canada. 

The three great terrors which have so often swept the Old World from 
the Volga to the Shannon, and spared not even our young land of the morning, 
have left Bethlehem exempt. Pestilence could never storm this green fortress 
of health and purity ; and the hostile arms of Briton and Indian stopped short 
at Jefferson, fifteen miles away. But famine iias come much nearer, during 
the early days of the hill-towns, ninety years ago, when the half-starved pio- 
neers were obliged to load a team with potash, their only product, and have it 
drawn away by four oxen, to be exchanged for provisions at Concord, Mass. 
During the four weeks consumed by the wagon in its slow journey of three 
hundred and forty miles the inhabitants lived on roots and herbs, dug from 
the ground and cooked by the brave women who had followed their husbands 
to this outer skirmish-line of civilization. In these days the great Sinclair 
House draws its manifold supplies in far less time from Iowa and Florida and 
the Bermudas. 



THE MAPLEWOOD HOTEL. 




EAR the place where the Bethlehem ridge breaks clown towards 
the Ammonoosuc Valley on the east, about half a league from 
the village and an equal distance from the railway-station, is 
one of the best view-points on the sunset side of the moun- 
tains. The entire Presidential Range is seen thence, from the 
high and clear-cut spires of Adams and Jefferson in the north 
to the bold crests of Monroe, Franklin, and the other mountains which fall away 
to the Crawford Notch, terraced like a stairway of giants. And in the centre, 
occupying that prominent and conspicuous position to which its enormous mass 
and supreme height entitle it, is the lordly chieftain of the group. Mount Wash- 
ington, visible from base to crest, with the iron track winding up its rugged 
slopes, and the little cluster of storm-defying houses on the summit. But no 
adjectives can be veneered on to these bold topographical details that shall even 
hint at the superlative glory of the scene during the elite hours of the early 
morning, when the range assumes the richest hues of black and purple before 
the rosy east, and the last hour of the day, during which the magic of the 
sunset-light transforms the great range into a world of amethyst, as fair to the 
eye as Bunyan's Delectable Mountains. 

On this site stands the latest-built and handsomest of the great summer 
resorts of rural New Hampshire, — the Maplewood Hotel, which has grown 
rapidly from the small boarding-house of six years ago to the present immense 
caravansary. Of all the hotels of Bethlehem, this is the nearest to Nature's 
heart, in its happy separation from the white-paint glories of a new American 
village and from the chatter of the street. 

There is one view-point within a few minutes' walk of the Maplewood which 
no one should fail to visit. It is known as Crufts' Ledge, in honor of the Bos- 
tonian who built the hotel, and gives a prospect of the Presidential Range fully 
as fine as that obtained from any place on Bethlehem Street. But the chief 
charm is the. view of the vast and ponderous Twin-Mountain group, supported 
on the west by the Franconia Mountains, whose peaks of Haystack and Mount 
Lafayette are as boldly advanced into the sky, and as sharp and craggy, as any 
lover of the sensational in scenery could desire. Some writers have likened 
these peaks to the majestic Jungfrau, queen of Alps ; but such a similitude is a 
blank absurdity : and if we must follow the vogue, and cross the Atlantic for 
comparisons, there are more fitting ones in the Saxon Switzerland, and even 
among the Sabine Mountains, where Soracte and Gennaro rise over the gray 
Campagna of Rome. 




FABYAN HOUSE. 




THE FABYAN HOUSE. 

R. STORRS once said that the Pilgrims who landed at Plym- 
outh found before them "an empty continent;" but it was not 
until the conquest of Canada, in 1760, that their descendants 
ventured far into that great untrodden wilderness. Amono- 
these pioneers was young Eleazar Rosebrook, who left his home 
in the Blackstone Valley, and settled on the Upper Connecticut, 
and, after winning his title of captain in the border conflicts of the Revolution- 
ary war, moved into the heart of the White Mountains, and established a farm 
on the present Fabyan site. His daughter married Abel Crawford, and bore 
eight stalwart sons, the lords of the hills, the strong-armed men who made 
new order in many a chaotic place. One of these, Ethan Allen, the king of 
the mountain-guides and the terror of the bears and wild-cats for leagues 
around, inherited the Rosebrook Place, and opened a public-house there, as 
early as 1803, which was destroyed by fire sixteen years later. Another hotel 
on this site suffered the same fate ; and its successor, built by Fabyan himself, 
and containing a hundred rooms, was burned about the year 1850. In the 
olden time there was a legend that an Indian once stood on the great mound 
of the Giant's Grave near by, and waved a flaming torch, while he shouted in 
the night, "No pale-face shall take deep root here! — this the Great Spirit 
whispered in my ear." When the present Fabyan House was erected, in 
1872-73, its constructors levelled the Giant's Grave, as if the evil spell should 
be removed when the mount of cursing vanished. 

Near the house, whose white front extends for over three hundred feet 
along the valley, are noisy junctions of roads and railways, with their ever-flow- 
ing tides of humanity. But he who can look over and beyond this brawling 
life of the hour may see the great plateau of the Ammonoosuc ascending 
gradually to the eastward, covered with dense forests ; and at its end, gashed 
and torn by many a sharp throe of Nature, and crested with bare and rocky 
peaks, rises the stately line of the Presidential Range, seen in full panoramic 
view as it can be from no other point on the sunset side of the great hills. 
It is but seven miles away, and no minor ridge intervenes to diminish the 
majestic effect of this mightiest wave-crest of New England's rocks and for- 
ests. . The scene is in the highest degree grand and sombre, almost oppres- 
sive, when clouds blacken over the peaks, or the long sierra is shrouded in 
the gloom of late twilight. 




THE OLD WILLEY HOUSE. 




THE OLD WILLEY HOUSE. 

]ONG after the last war-party of Canadian Indians had driven 
their Puritan captives from the coast-villages northward through 
the White-Mountain Notch, the unknown and forgotten pass 
was re-discovered by a wandering hunter ; and the State of New 
Hampshire soon built a road through it, applying for that 
purpose the proceeds of a confiscated Tory estate. Thereafter 
there was a great amount of travel over the new turnpike, whereby the farmers 
of the Coos country carried their produce to the coast in huge wagons, and 
brought back their needed household supplies. The building now known as 
the Willey House was erected in 1793, three miles from the site of the 
Crawford House, and at the foot of Mount Willey, to serve as an inn for 
entertaining the farmers and teamsters who travelled over this rugged road; 
and Mr. Samuel Willey, jun., occupied and enlarged it in 1825 and 1826. 

Early in the summer of 1826 a frightful avalanche of rock and earth 
fell from the side of Mount Willey, and awakened the liveliest alarm in the 
denizens of the house. But a long peace ensued, during the drought which 
throughout that flaming summer parched all the hill-country, and reduced its 
soil to light powder. The prolonged hush of intense heat was only the 
preliminary of a natural convulsion which shook the hills to their founda- 
tions, when (late in August) the windows of heaven were opened, and for 
day after day a tremendous plunging rain descended, and awful black clouds 
filled the Notch to its bottom, while the rivers swelled to devastating torrents, 
and the flanks of the ridges were scarred by long slides, — the tracks of 
avalanches, which hurled ruin upon the valleys below. 

Travellers who journeyed through the Notch after the storm, painfully 
struggling over the debris of the dismantled mountains, found the Willey 
House standing intact in the midst of a frightful chaos of sand, rock, and 
broken trees, which had flowed like a torrent down the side of Mount Willey. 
A high ledge at the rear of the house had split the massive stream, and caused 
it to flow to right and left, leaving an island on which the buildings stood, 
and re-uniting its divergent currents below. But no sign of life was there, 
save the disordered beds and the scattered clothing, which told of a hasty 
flight into the night and storm. Two days later, searching-parties found the 
bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Willey and their hired man buried in the avalanche ; 
and afterwards the remains of two of the Willey children and another servant 
were found. Three of the children of the family were buried so deeply 
beneath the ruins, that no trace of them was ever discovered. The entire 
family and its dependants were exterminated. 




TACOB'S LADDER, MOUNT WASHINGTON RAILW.W 




JACOB'S LADDER, ON THE MOUNT-WASH- 
INGTON RAILWAY. 

S the train ascends the long slope of the mountain, its progress 
is so slow, that the traveller can comprehend and enjoy the 
varying and ever-widening landscapes below, where glens and 
plains and far-away peaks burst into view, one after the other, 
while the great ravine called the Gulf of Mexico falls away 
into silent and sunless depths close beside. About a mile 
above the sea-level the track runs out on a high and massive trestle, the steep- 
est part of the ascent, where, for every yard that the train advances, it must rise 
also a foot. Over the low crags of Mount Clay the cold east wind breaks, and 
agitates the dark patches of undergrowth below, eclicloinicd about the head of 
the Gulf of Mexico. Slowly the quaint little engine pushes the train upward 
over a line of timbered piers heavy enough to uphold the monster locomotives 
which roar through the Raton Pass, while a sixfold system of checks is ready 
to bring it to a halt at any moment. The dense foliage of the forests below ceases 
here, and gives place to lichen-covered rocks, between which peep clumps of saxi- 
frage and reindeer-moss, the vegetation of Labrador and Lapland. Within an 
hour the train has run from the temperate zone to the frigid zone. During 
the remainder of the ascent, which is more gradual, the desolation increases, 
the rocks assume an ancient and storm-worn apjoearance, and the horizon con- 
tinually grows wider and more inspiring, until at last the superb and heart- 
stirring prospect includes points in five States and the northern viceroyalty. 

The path over which the tourists of forty years ago slowly toiled, while 
the horn of Fabyan sounded in the clouds above, made a sharp ascent near 
the present railway-trestle ; and the men of that day, still tinctured with the 
Puritanism of the morning era, ere yet (as Lowell saith) New England had 
become New Ireland, named this skyward ascent Jacob's Ladder, as if, per- 
chance, the angels of God might have been seen by the eye of faith ascend- 
ing and descending thereon. This quaint title has latterly been appropriated 
to the trestle, over which the toiling trains lift from six to eight thousand 
easy-going travellers every year. Up the heights, which seem impassable to 
even an Ariel, lightest of airy spirits, the ponderous locomotive moves onward 
with its convoy of crowded cars through and above the clouds, until it stands 
upon the crest which even the icebergs of the glacial age respected and stood 
aloof from. Only twenty years have passed since it was proposed by the 
legislators of New Hampshire, when a daft and impractical inventor asked for 
a charter to build this railroad, to so amplify the terms of the charter, that 
he might extend his track to the moon. 



LIZZIE BOURNE'S MONUMENT. 




HE summer tourist, hoisted to the main-top of New England by 
a steam-elevator, and descending on the other side over a broad 
white road, borne breezily down in a comfortable carriage, can 
scarcely realize, that, to many a doomed soul, this peak has 
been as terrible as Sinai, and as accursed as Ebal. Some of 
these have been saved as by miracle ; and others, wandering 
upward over vague paths, lost, chilled, and panic-stricken, have breathed their 
lives out into the frost-clouds, and left their bones on the cold black rocks. 
Had such tragic scenes happened among the Scottish or Rhenish mountains, 
they would have invested the fatal peak with a new and unfading charm of 
pathos ; but in our more active life, where the front ranks are always full and 
advancing, they are well-nigh forgotten within a twelvemonth. 

Yet the story of the death of Miss Lizzie Bourne can never pass out of 
memory, and is known to all who enter the New-Hampshire highlands. She 
rambled up the mountain, one bright September afternoon in 1855, with her 
uncle and cousin, and was tempted to try the ascent to the Summit House. 
The twilight came down, and with it a cloud of frosty mist, pierced by terrible 
winds : the path was lost ; the benighted climbers became weary, bruised, and 
panic-stricken ; and at last Miss Bourne sank down in exhaustion, and died 
within a few hours. All that night the survivors watched by her body ; and at 
morning they saw (oh the pity of it !) that their fatal bivouac had been made 
within five hundred feet of the Summit House, where they might have found 
relief and warmth and life. On the place made thus sadly famous a rude 
cairn of stones was raised, and still remains, to remind the passengers on the 
railway what terrors once surrounded this huge dark peak. Throughout the 
long winters the frost decorates the monument with its rarest beauties of 
feathery forms, as if in eternal penitence for its fatal attack ; and the black pile 
is converted into a magnificent mausoleum white as Carrara marble, and 
carved by the wind into forms as delicate as ever issued from the studios of 
Florence. 




THE FRANKENSTEIX TRESTLE. 



THE FRANKENSTEIN TRESTLE. 




HE line of the Portland and Ogdcnsburg Railroad, north of Bemis 
Station, crosses the bright brook which descends from the Are- 
thusa Falls, and then traverses a series of cuts in the rocky 
flank of Mount Nancy. Suddenly the train emerges ^om the 
last of these trenches, and seems to leap boldly out into the 
air over a deep ravine which yawns below, flying at the face 
of the Frankenstein Cliff beyond. The amazed traveller, looking downward 
from the car-window, sees beneath a graceful and slender bridge supported 
on web-like iron piers which rise from the floor of the gorge, nearly eighty 
feet below. The train flies for five hundred feet over this mid-air path, and 
then moves on to the substantial foundations beyond. 

Even this silent and solitary region has its romantic fables and its 
enchanted glens. One of the weirdest and most beautiful of the many Indian 
legends which pertain to the White Hills is that relating to the mystery of 
the Great Carbuncle, whose existence has been firmly believed in, within less 
than a century, by the yeomen of Western Maine. Hawthorne has used this 
theme as the basis of one of his inimitable "Twice-Told Tales," introducing 
the Lord de Vere, Doctor Cacaphodel, and Master Ichabod Pigsnort, among 
the seekers for the marvellous gem. The most ancient traditions tell that this 
object of such great desires was hidden in the glen of Dry (or Mount-Wash- 
ington) River, which debouches into the Saco nearly opposite Frankenstein 
Cliff, whence it flashed its baleful light far over the lowlands, startling the 
rangers in their lonely night-camps, or arousing the pioneer farmers sleeping 
in their log-huts in the Saco Valley. One of the old chronicles quaintly 
says, " Hearing that a glorious carbuncle had been found under a large shelv- 
ing rock, difficult to obtain, placed there by the Indians, who killed one of 
their number that an evil spirit might haunt the place, we went up Dry River 
with guides, and had with us a good man to lay the evil spirit ; but returned 
sorely bruised, treasureless, and not even saw that wonderful sight." 

Near the head of the same ravine one of the ancient hunters who dwelt 
among these hills claimed to have found two immense ledges, so overlaid 
with pure diamonds that their intense light blinded him. He carried out 
such bits as could be broken away, and sold them for a great price ; but 
neither he nor the adventurous seekers who followed his track could ever find 
the treasure again. Occasionally a hardy fisherman enters the glen in our 
day, and returns with stores of shining trout, and mayhap a handful of glit- 
tering quartz-crystals. 



